


scīre (v.)

by bookhobbit, OfShoesAndShips



Category: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell & Related Fandoms, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (TV), Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - Susanna Clarke
Genre: Light Angst, M/M, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-24
Updated: 2019-03-24
Packaged: 2019-11-29 11:55:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18222821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bookhobbit/pseuds/bookhobbit, https://archiveofourown.org/users/OfShoesAndShips/pseuds/OfShoesAndShips
Summary: scīre:to know, to understandTwo ficlets on the following pair of quotes:"Childermass knows. Childermass understands.""I understood you before you wrote a word."





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> By Bookhobbit

In the cold winter of 1812, Mr. Norrell is telling Lascelles: Childermass knows. Childermass understands. He does not look at Childermass's face, and so misses the flicker that passes over it. It's a familiar expression, in any case, if Mr Norrell ever bothered to notice it.

-

In the cold winter of 1816, Childermass is laying in bed. There are shadows in his face deeper than usual, and his brown skin looks thin and grey at the edges. He's asleep, or so Mr Norrell thinks, and not peacefully: beneath his eyelids, his eyes move a little, fluttery and nervous. Mr Norrell watches him sleep and feels the cold press of long-delayed fear against his own heart. It is not nothing to almost lose the only person who has ever understood you. 

With a little start, Childermass wakes, and turns his head.

"Back to scold me again, I suppose," he says.

"I have quite finished scolding," says Mr Norrell.

"For the moment," says Childermass wryly. Mr Norrell does not deny it. Childermass knows him far too well. "Don't tell me you've come to visit me on my sickbed; nursing is not one of your occupations."

"I have only come to see that you are well," says Mr Norrell carefully to his own hands. 

"What is it you need of me?"

Childermass knows Mr Norrell far too well. "Nothing, yet: only there is the problem of Lady Pole, once you are well."

"I have already given it some thought."

Mr Norrell looks up, a little startled. "You knew I would ask?"

"I know you very well," says Childermass, and breaks into a coughing fit.

Mr Norrell brings him water, and feels his heart squeeze again.

"Why did you do it?" he says.

Childermass does not need to ask what he means. "I could not let you die."

"I do not understand you," Mr Norrell says. 

For the briefest of moments their hands touch as Childermass gives the water back to Mr Norrell. Childermass's hand feels cold. His fingers do not linger against Mr Norrell's, but his eyes do. For the first time, Mr Norrell sees that flicker of expression as it crosses Childermass's face, and has no opportunity to look away. It's a complicated twist of something Mr Norrell cannot quite divine the meaning of.

"No," says Childermass heavily. "No, you don't."

-

In the cold winter of 1817, Mr Norrell sits in his house and waits for Strange. He knows this as well as he knows his own long-buried heart: Strange will come. Strange is a magician, and therefore Mr Norrell understands him perfectly. 

-

In the cold winter of 1815, Mr Norrell is telling Strange: I understood you before you wrote a word.

In an hour, or perhaps two, Strange will be gone: Mr Norrell knows this despite the arguments he is even now marshalling to try and stop it. He can feel his face twisting into a complicated flicker of something inexpressible with words, something he knows that Strange will, in his turn, be unable to divine the meaning of. 

-

In the balmy spring of 1817, Mr Norrell is standing in a churchyard in Venice, waiting for Strange to return. The air is warm and the hour is noon, but all around him is the darkness of midnight. It is a darkness Mr Norrell is unable to resent: it will keep them safe, and it will keep Strange with him. It is the sunlight he resents now, the brightness of reality intruding for a few small hours.

"I see you did not ask her to come into the darkness," says Mr Norrell.

"No," says Strange, a little uncomfortably. "What sort of life is that for a woman? I want her to be happy."

"And you yourself want to be free to do magic."

Strange looks still more uncomfortable. "Do you wish me to invite my wife into our private curse?"

"I do not."

"Well, then," says Strange. "Why did you ask? I do not understand you."

It is only, thinks Mr Norrell, that I know you. He knows the inconsistencies of Strange's heart: he can see, spooling out in front of them, a future of exploration, of adventure, Arabella a distant memory. A subject of melancholy and devotion, but never quite enough to stop them from moving forward.

Mr Norrell knows Strange very well.

"No," says Mr Norrell heavily. He understands Childermass at last, the bitterness of the cup they have passed between them. "No, you don't."


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> By OfShoesAndShips

Norrell’s notes covered the desk and half the floor, cream parchment across the hardwood. A little stain worked off the floor and onto the paper, obscuring Norrell’s tight handwriting. Strange was a still shadow at the desk, paper caught under his feet and hands; he was leaning forward, his hair falling into his face. Still and flat like a shadow-puppet at a fair; candles backlit him, edging him in gold.

Childermass stepped around the fall of papers, passing at the edge of the stretch of the light. His footfalls left holes in the shadow; they paused and then filled in like water, a little blue, catching a slight edge of gold on their ripples. A fallen book; Childermass bent to pick it up and his fingers passed through the cover, refracting through the leather. He could see the letters cast strange on his skin, backwards and distorted. He stood up and looked back at Strange; still flat and shadowed, moving too slowly. He was frowning as he picked through the pages of notes, and every so often he would shift to throw light across them.

Childermass stepped over the book; his heel caught the very edge of the light and the air creaked around him, stretching tight. Norrell, sitting in a chair by the fire, looked up in startlement; Childermass, still half in the light, heard his sharp breath when the rest of the room was in silence. Their eyes met across the room; Norrell’s, shallow and blue, deepened by the firelight; his expression was warm and half-unreal, as if it were drawn in candlewax.

The book in Norrell’s lap seemed almost to glow; the print standing out shadowed against the firelit pages, the gilt that the light edged on the green leather. The only copy of its kind, now, that; the only book of Norrell’s that Childermass had never read. Strange’s style had always been oddly impenetrable to him; he had opened it once and found himself like Strange behind them, pouring over a confusion of words too crabbed to read.

Norrell’s small hands, smoothed out by the softness of the light, moved to shut the book. Childermass shifted his heel back into the darkness and watched as Norrell’s eyes grew half-dim, half-shadowed. He went back to his book; his eyes still gleaming with the golden edge of the firelight. Childermass could see his mouth working as he read.  _ It is here we find the Raven King _ ,  _ in the dark places of England; in the places where the world casts long and liquid shadows, where even the oldest things can travel unknown and unseen. It is here, as magicians, we will meet him; for we know the shadows more intimately than most. We shall be able to read the impressions he has left upon England and feel his presence in the deepest darkness. _ Norrell’s mouth grew still; his gaze lifted. Norrell stood; the fire and candlelight fought across his face, casting deep, watery shadows over his mouth.

He could step into that firelight, Childermass thought. The air heaved. The breath in his mouth tasted of burning wood. The shadows dragged at his feet as he stepped backwards, like walking through water, and his clothes lay heavy on him. He could step into the light, and Norrell would know –

Norrell was walking towards him. He knew the form of the spell; perhaps he could see it there, deepening the shadow. Perhaps he knew the sound of Childermass’s footfalls and had felt them in the creaking of the air.

But Norrell half knelt at the edge of the shadow and the light and picked the book up from the floor. The back of his hand passed a breath from the back of Childermass’s ankle, and then he stood and moved away from the shadows.

Strange looked up; Norrell must have spoken. But he was turned away, and Childermass could not understand him.


End file.
